"Was there a way to imagine a sexual relationship beyond the linear progression of a 'relationship'? In between weddings I entered the homes of monogamous couples who lived together. They would feed me and introduce me to their pets and later their babies. I looked for guidance in their towels and coverlets, the organization of the shared closet, their cake stands or seltzer machines and houseplants. I would enter the home of an ex-boyfriend now living with a woman and experience even greater estrangement, looking at the hairpins on the glass shelf below the medicine cabinet, or the flaxseed oil in the refrigerator. This was the life he had chosen over our life together, which would have had different hair accessories, no flaxseed oil in the refrigerator. 'I don't know how to pin up my hair properly,' I would think, as an explanation."
Emily Witt, Future Sex
